to transfer tape to digital or not?

[numrologst]

Well, I'm enjoying my new(to me) tape machine. It's really changed my world in the last few months... It's been okay adjusting to 24 tracks and tape bounces. Although I have become not much of a tape bounce fan.

Basically for 75% of what I track, i can make do with 24 tracks. But the other 25% of the songs is really killing me...

1) I am sacrificing a bit on drum sounds... Most of the time 1 overhead, kick, snare, and stereo room mics work... I'd say I use this setup 75% of the time and It kills... But there are some songs coming up that I know I am gonna need my traditional drum setup... 2 oh, 2 room, kick, snare top/bottom, 2 toms, and floor tom. And sometimes hats and fok so that is 9-12 drum tracks... I know I need that sound for some of my songs coming up. 12 drum tracks is just not acceptable for me on tape, and I will not bounce my drum tracks

2) On songs that I have 5 drum tracks on, I am still starting to run out of room. A typical song for my band will have the 5 drum tracks, bass, 2-4 different elec guitar tracks, 1-2 acoustic guitar tracks, 1-2 piano tracks, 1-4 synth tracks, 2 vocals, 2 harmonies. Then there are more parts... It adds up to 24+ tracks to be on probably 7 songs.

So, I am contemplating transfering to digital and continuing to record to tape or recording stuff like claps, tambo, etc to digital.

Unfortunately I dont have much time to experiment. So, I am looking for some answers and good advice from you guys with more experience. What do you guys say? Transfer to digital and keep recording on tape? Transfer to digital and finish tracking on digital?

The only way I can figure to do the transfers is striping the tape with smpte and letting my DAW chase the jh-24. But i am really not sure what all is involved, exactly how to do it, and the sonic tradeoffs.

THe tape machine is a jh24, and my daw is nuendo.

I assume this is what I need to do:
1) Use nuendos smpte generator and run smpte through my midisport smpte out into say channel 24 on my tape.
2) Run the smpte striped track back through the smpte in on the midisport into nuendo...Thus nuendo would be chasing the machine.

I have an apogee ad-16x for ad right now... I would dump tracks 1-16, then 17-24... Then submix, print back to tape... Record the rest to tape the dump the new tracks back.

Will this work, and how exactly does the daw sync to the machine. I am just trying to wrap my head around this... Any advice is appreciated.

[Musiclab]

do a search there are a few threads on syncing your daw and 2" machine together. I use my 2" for drums and pretty much whatever I can fit on the first 23 tracks, I have the DAW chase my 2" and I have 36 channels of I/O for my daw. Basically that gets me where I need to go. I only transfer from tape to the daw if I need to edit. If I do I put it back on tape, it's still a better form of storage in my opinion.

[MarkRB]

Hi Numrologist,

Given the gear you have the Nuendo chasing the machine seems like the only real way for you to go.
Having a DAW chase timecode from a tape machine isn't ideal as the tape machine is quite likely to vary its speed a little therefore affecting your samplerate & clock speed along with it.
Having said that I have done this a few times and it works OK.

You could dump everything off tape into your DAW having got that "tape sound", but only having 16 inputs may cause slight timing problems. As good as chasing SMPTE can be there are always slight imperfections in the timing i.e. phasing and slight flamming.

A better option if you have the cash is to invest in a Lynx Timeline unit which you feed SMPTE from your DAW. The timeline locks to that and controls the tape machine's transport, very cool and by far the most solid way of hooking up DAW and tape machine.

[Nu-tra]

I was using a tape machine with my daw and it wasn't perfect when it would chase. I basically put 4 clicks at the head of the tape and on every track and then I would zoom in and line the clicks up on the screen.... It worked great. I would track and dump into my daw and it sounded killer.

[numrologst]

hey nu-tra

why 4 clicks? Could you explain your process a little more?

It seems like that would be a better idea... This way you have a click as your best reference and nothing has to chase. I am very interested... Anyone else had luck with this type of setup.

By the way I did a search... There was some useful info, but I asked questions not contained in anything I searched for. This is a pretty legitimate question that deserves to be asked over again... I'm not asking what preamp should i record kick with. This is a farily deep question that we can discuss.

So anymore advice/opinions is appreciated

[kingsley]

Im thinking of doing the same thing. Why not fill up your basic 24 tracks, transfer to digital then do overdubs in Nuendo...use Nuendo out to board or mix. Have you dumped to digital yet, and if so how much was lost. I have heard alot of people using this prosses.
For me im looking at a 2" 16 track for tracking and mixing in DP. I do the summing thing with the fulcrom.

[dbbubba]

First of all....

Back up a step.

When using 24 track before DAWs came along you had no choice, but to do bounces in the machine.
You were going to limit your production possibilities by recording every mic of a drum kit onto it's own track. You gotta' mix 'em together at some point, so do some of it on the way in. Combine that FOK mic with the KICK mic! If you want to use an UNDER SNARE mic combine it with the SNARE TOP mic. Mix the toms to two tracks. Two OHs and Stereo Room mics are just going to have to use four tracks unless you are a brave person. I could always fit a kit onto eight tracks unless the drummer had double kicks.

You probebly are going to submix your KYBDs down to a few tracks.

If I knew I was going to have lots of BG vocals I would leave 13/14 open and record the BG parts with at least one DBL per part to tracks 17 through 24. I'd bounce them to 13/14. Truthfully, this is the best way to pre-mix the BG vocals and get a "produced" sound.

Here's how my 2" masters usually looked on big productions:
1.) kick
2.) snare
3.) toms L
4.) toms R
5.) OH L
6.) OH R
7.) drum ambience L
8.) drum ambience R
9.) bass mic
10.) bass D.I.
11.) GTR A
12.) GTR B
13.) BG Vox L
14.) BG Vox R
15.) KYBD submix L
16.) KYBD submix R
17.) ACSTC L
18.) ACSTC R
19.) Asst. ODs (Perc? Lead GTR?)
20.) Asst. ODs (Perc? Lead GTR?)
21.) Lead Vox take #1
23.) Lead Vox take #2
24.) Lead Vox take #3
24.) Lead Vox take #4

If the vocalist could get a decent take on one track then fine. If neccesary I would comp the Vox takes to tracks 19 or 20 before final ODs.

You have to have an idea of what you want to end up with and what you'll have to record in order to get what-ever you want the end thing to sound like.

The whole process is like working on a crossword puzzle, but the production values you can gain by bouncing in the machine outweigh any loss due to going down a generation. I used to be afraid to bounce until someone with way more experience at record production showed me the benefits. I thought that the generation loss hurt things.... It doesn't. The guy who taught me to bounce said to me, "You have probebly not heard a hit song that didn't have vocals that were at least a generation down in years."

I have even recorded a full rock rhythm section, full KYBDs, full string section with FOUR passes, brass section with two passes, woodwinds with two passes and orchestral percussion passes on 24 track.
I have actually done this back when you were lucky to have EIGHT TRACKS of DAW! Of course I could re-do my bounces there because nothing was destructive. I rarely had to do that though.

Learn to bounce in the machine.
My productions took a quantum leap when I learned how to do this.

I still use these techniques when working with unlimited track count possibilties.

To be honest, I transfer everything to DAW these days because I can clean things up and edit parts easier. I use the DAW as a multitrack deck with good editing. I go back out twentyfour tracks to a mixing console.

[numrologst]

i get what you are saying dbubba. But it just seems way easier to not have to bounce. If we have the benefit of dumping to digital there is no need to bounce back to tape. I can do it and sometimes I don't mind...Vocals and keys and some guitar stuff is no big deal. But I definately don't wanna bounce any drums.

For most of the stuff I do, the song is unkown until it's done. We have an arrangement and depending on which drummer I am using, the song will start to turn in different ways from there. But for instance we had a johnny cash influence song that we were doing... We got together with a new drummer and started messing around and by the end of the day we had something that sounds like it was off yoshimi battles the pink robots... We went from Cash to Flaming Lips in a day. So I try to get an idea of where I'm going with the songs, but sometimes it's just not possible.

Hence, I get my 24 tracks filled up and I haven't even done percussion, vox, or keys. It's hard to explain.

I can make it with 24 tracks and bounces, but if there is a feasible not ridiculously hard way to dump, then i am gonna do it.

Also, while I was having my 1/4" mixdown deck worked on, I mixed straight into nuendo and it sounded fantastic. Really quite nice... I honestly haven't mixed down to my studer since.

[dbbubba]

It's just a different way of working.

I almost always pre-mix mt BG parts to a stereo pair if it's more than four tracks in the DAW.

Danny Brown

[triez]

The critical thing to remember if you sync your DAW to to a tape machine is that you MUST resolve word clock. if you just run SMPTE from your machine and have the DAW follow it, the timing and pitch will drift between them as the tape speed varies slightly, which it always will. If you have MIDI tracks playing as well from the DAW then it will get out of pitch as well.

You need to use something such as a MOTU MIDI Timepiece AV or similar that will read SMPTE from tape and will then not only output SMPTE sync to the DAW, but it also outputs a word clock that speeds up and slows down with the tape, keeping the DAW exactly in sync.

This will keep your track properly locked, but whether it is the kind of clock you want running your system is of course a whole other can of worms...

[Velvetfreddy]

I went through hell about a year ago trying to get this stuff figured out. Now I'm pleased every time I turn my shit on. I have a 1973 MCI JH16 following my Digital Performer rig via 2 Lynx Timecode Modules. The Lynx boxes cost me around $100 a piece, but getting the cabling right was tough. I had to mod my tape machine a little bit too. If your tape machine is a little newer then the Lynx will probably already have software for it, then you just need the proper cable. Tape following the computer is a great way to go. It forces the tape machine to run without any wow and flutter. I could not get the midi/computer chase tape thing to work at all with my stuff.
Now I have 15 tracks on tape(1 for smpte) and 32 in the computer, (which I should hope that I never need) and it works like a charm.

Good luck---